


Fruits of the Harvest

by wargoddess



Series: Prompts [14]
Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Zombie Apocalypse, M/M, Zombie Apocalypse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-23
Updated: 2018-05-23
Packaged: 2019-05-13 01:14:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,204
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14739326
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wargoddess/pseuds/wargoddess
Summary: After the horror, a farm, and family.





	Fruits of the Harvest

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Zombie Age](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1480456) by [wargoddess](https://archiveofourown.org/users/wargoddess/pseuds/wargoddess). 



> A promptfic: "Carver/Cullen, making good food with produce from their farm. (Bonus if Fenris is also participating, but feel free to disregard!)" Following on from another promptfic, "Zombie Age."

Cullen knows that the demons aren’t gone.  He saw them once -- once --

\-- oncetheytookhimandDIDTHINGSTOHIMohpleaseGodhedoesnotwanttoremember --

\-- once. He saw them, and was their meat for a time, and they drove him mad.

But then their madness came forth into the world.  Then Cullen learned that it was _not_ all in his head; monsters were real. They were not the same monsters, but they lurched and gibbered the same way, ate people the same way, and their poor victims were just as dead.

Madness in a world of insanity is not so bad a trait, Cullen has discovered.  And survival is a hell of a curative.

But the bad times are over.  Now Cullen lives, whole and healthy and as sane as the world permits, with his angel.  He does not tell Carver that he thinks of him so; Carver would be disturbed by the revelation.  It matters not, in any case.  Cullen worships him all the same. Carver is big and strong and beautiful and vulgar and kind, and Cullen knows he does not deserve such glory. He prays thanks for his good fortune every day.

They have escaped England, which is lost to the plague of monsters.  The refugee camps were terrible, and Carver could not bear them after their long time of pleasant solitude on the Hawke family farm.  For him, Cullen has given everything he owned, and done things of which he will never tell Carver – but what are such things, after demonic torment?  This has gotten them released into a program meant to help reestablish fresh food supplies in a world reduced to scavenging.

Things become instantly better. The farm they are given – no one says what happened to its former owners, but the evidence is there in a rust-colored spot near the back of one old barn, if they care to consider it – is nowhere near as fine as Hawke’s old place. It’s close to a well-traveled road, so they don’t have the luxury of pure isolation that they once did. The soil is stony and sour, and the seed that the government gives them is three-quarters literal trash; someone has filled most of the bags with shredded paper. The black market has claimed its tax, stealing grain for the short term rather than risking a longer-term investment.  They have only six sheep and someone steals the lone ram during their first week.

…But they are together.  They are together, and the demons are elsewhere if not gone.  That is all Cullen needs to be happy.

So they work, just the two of them, at making the farm a home.  Carver declares the soil “shitty” for grain anyway, so they barter their poor seed for useful tools and then go scavenging on other abandoned farms and houses for anything that will grow.  They find things that the government tells them no one wants, but Cullen knows this is a lie.  People who have been reduced to eating canned beans and MREs for months on end _will_ want squashes and berries and grapes and peppers.  Cullen suspects someone in government – perhaps the same fools who took the grain – either knows nothing about farming or hopes that Carver and Cullen are stupid.  Or both.

And… God provides.

Their crops thrive.  Two of the remaining ewes turn out to be pregnant – and both lambs are male. The fields produce such a massive yield that even after giving the government their due, Carver and Cullen must open a farmstand, and even hire help to sell the surplus.  They sell blueberries and sheeps’-milk chevre and rhubarb and pepper sauce.  They sell strawberries and fat blue-black grapes and sweet peas and herbs of every kind.  The corn comes out bland and small, so they barter it with another farmer as animal feed, in exchange for spelt flour – and now they sell fruit pies.  Cullen makes these because Carver is abysmal at cooking.  Carver laughs and calls Cullen a good farmers’ wife.  Cullen does not mind this, though he laughs too.  It’s true enough.  Has God not given them to each other?  It does not matter what labels they use.

And as the world settles back into normality – or however much normality there can be with half its population dead – word spreads about their little farmstand. Resurgent newspapers publish articles. More refugees come, and they hire more help. Other farmers come to sell with them, and soon there is a market. Carver insists that everyone keep prices low because everyone’s struggling, and because of this their crowds grow by the week.  They’re wealthy now.  They use it to pay their workers a decent wage, and to make the house more comfortable.  Carver splurges on only one thing: an enormous, devastatingly soft bed for them both.  It’s supposed to be so that they’ll rest better after hard days on the farm, but mostly they just use it to make love again and again and again.

(They still do this in silence. The demons are elsewhere, but neither of them has forgotten the time of horror. As scars go, though, these are well-healed. Cullen has had worse.)

And then.

One day an SUV rolls up.  Before it has even stopped, its door jolts open, and a tall, rawboned woman is out of it and running towards them with a speed that makes Cullen grope for his lost machete. But Carver shouts and runs at the woman too, and they embrace, and it’s clear that the only thing contagious here is the joy of a family reunited at long last.  It’s Marian, Carver’s older sister.  She’s heard about them, and has brought her lover – a taciturn, sinewy man whose face is seamed with white, curiously symmetrical scars – to find her miraculously alive baby brother. They’ve also brought three children, too old to be of Marian’s flesh and too visibly distinctive to be biologically related to each other. Foundlings, Marian tells them.  Hers, Cullen can see.

They come into the house and Cullen cooks them the finest dinner he can: aged lamb chops and sweet potatoes with chive and spinach with garlic, followed by fat slices of blueberry pie topped with sheepsmilk cream. The children wolf the food like anyone who’s known starvation. Marian weeps as she eats the pie. It was their mother’s favorite… and then she has to tell Carver how their mother died.  They all exchange stories.  It is a painful, bittersweet meal. Marian and the others stay the night. There’s plenty of room.

That night as they lie together, Carver is quiet. Cullen touches his cheek, letting him process, and sure enough Carver eventually says, “They’re living in the city, all of ‘em in a flat that the government assigned them. It’s a shithole, but all they can get.  Her bloke, Fenris, is from overseas and undocumented.  You know how anti-immigrant those wankers are, even now.”

Cullen smiles.  “Of course they may live here with us,” he says.  Carver’s breath catches, but that is that.

It’s the end of the world, and also its beginning. There are demons out there, but Cullen has his angel right here, and with Carver, everything is safe and good. Together they have made heaven, and – very soon now – heaven will become a home.

 


End file.
